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The color TV industry in China has become a mature industry. Its development demonstrates and provides reference implications for how developing industries within a country can achieve a technological leap. This paper aims to address this issue.

An exploratory case study approach is taken to find the key factors in the technological catch‐up of China's traditional industry.

In the study it is found that China's color TV industry, as a mature traditional industry, has four‐dimensional key factors affecting the catch‐up of technology in the flat‐panel stage: market; merger and acquisition; international cooperation innovation for patent; and the roles of internal reform. “Market” is the window of opportunity and challenge; “merger and acquisition” is the key factor for making the patent convert from external mode to internal mode by deviant‐track. The “international cooperation innovation for patent” is also a key factor to ensure achievement of technology catch‐up and sustainable technological innovation. The role of internal reform promoter is the key factor in the technological catch‐up process in which taking entrepreneur as the core.

The article describes Changhong's flat‐panel TV technology catch‐up mode, analyzes four‐dimensional key factors affecting the technology catch‐up of China's color TV industry; the Chinese color TV industry as mature industry; and discusses which developments have demonstrated how to achieve a technological leap in developing industries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the prediction of competitive response based on the characteristics of market and non‐market actions comprehensively, and develop a four‐stage decision‐making model of firm's competitive action, which is significant for Chinese practicing managers when formulating and implementing the strategies, and further predicting competitors' strategic choices.

The research adopted the method of structured content analysis and carried out the survey in Chinese home appliance industry, mainly covering the largest firms, including TCL, Hisense, Changhong, Konka, Haier, and Skyworth. The method of multiple regression analysis was employed to test the hypotheses.

The results show that in order to comprehensively forecast competitor's responding behaviors, the firms could not only limit their perspective to market field but also pay attention to non‐market. Additionally, in the process of dynamic interaction, the attacking or responding action is not independent and it is related significantly to another three type decisions, which are market and non‐market, strategic and tactic, and collective and individual. Further, the study asserts that, in market field, tactic activity is more likely to trigger competitor's response than strategic one, while in non‐market, the situation is just the opposite. Meanwhile, the study figured out that individual market attack is easier to trigger individual market and non‐market response, as well as collective market response. While for non‐market action, whatever it is individual or collective, both would be easy to provoke competitor's collective response.

The research findings extend the existing competitive interaction theory to non‐market field. When forecasting competitor's choice of the competitive action, the firms could not only limit their perspective to market field but also pay attention to non‐market, attaching importance to certain situation of competitor's taking such non‐market action as corporate philanthropy, etc. to launch an attack or a response for gaining competitive advantage.

Accounting, corporate governance, business ethics.

MBA and EMBA.

China has largely changed its accounting practice in line with international norms. But its corporate governance structure continued to be administratively driven. Many Chinese-listed companies, especially big ones, are transformed from state-owned enterprises, with the government as their largest shareholder. It is no exception to Company C. Then what is the common pattern of accounting behaviour in China? An insight could be drawn by analysing this case.

Highlight two issues in point, namely accounting issue and governance issue. Chinese companies are now allowed to choose their accounting policies, while their top decisions are subject to government policies. Identify Company C's creative accounting by discussing China's accounting reform. In this regard, China has been relatively robust in terms of dropping its own practice and adopting western one. Discuss the corporate governance issues unveiled. What are company's performance criteria? Are they clearly established and enforced? And what about government's decision to change CEO twice in less than one year? What are the impacts on CEO's behaviour?

Teaching note.

In China the maturity of the industrial development has the demonstration and reference implications for how to achieve enterprises competitiveness among the developing industries in a country. With the development of globalization, how to improve the enterprises competitiveness has became a serious problem to be solved for Chinese enterprises. The management innovation is reasonable and appropriate to solve this problem. Compared with the independent innovation, adoptive management innovation has become the main way for enterprises to fulfill the management innovation and change the management styles under the open economy condition. The research strives to reveal the “black box” in the management innovation adoptive process and give an answer to a series of questions, such as “what is the role of entrepreneurs in management innovation adoptive process?”

Exploratory case study approach is taken to find the entrepreneurs' role in management innovation adoptive process of Chinese traditional industry.

This paper constructs the adoptive management innovation model from three dimensions, using exploratory case technique, which explores the key factors and mechanism of realizing management innovation adoption. Through the exploratory case analysis to verify the viewpoint which is proposed by the model: entrepreneurs played a leading role in the adoptive management innovation of non‐procedural process, and the role is the result of the mixed function of the external and internal environment. Entrepreneurs analyze and explore the new problems and opportunities, and their own experience and ability determine the cognition and explore degree towards these problems directly; entrepreneurs' integration ability of resources can be approved and accepted after the new practice has been proposed and become mature. Entrepreneur long‐term shaping on organizational resources determines whether the management innovations introduction would be really integrated into enterprise management system. The entrepreneur's typical behavior on “integration, learning and shaping” is the foundation and guarantee of adoptive management innovation, which have connective effect on adjacent stages.

The article describes Haier BPR process of adoptive management innovation and the adoptive management innovation mode, and analyzes the effect of entrepreneurs' role on adoptive management innovation of China's color TV industry. The Chinese color TV industry as the maturity industry has the demonstration and reference implications for how to achieve enterprises competitiveness in Chinese developing industries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of international acquisition activities on performance and its role in innovation build‐up in developing countries.

A case study was used to understand the deep integration process of acquisition process. The theory behind the study is the relationship of innovation management and merger and acquisition activities.

Acquiring a company with higher technologies has more risks and it requires the acquiring company to master a fast learning capability. The key to a successful international technology acquisition for a developing country is to leverage technology dynamics and build up a high‐level learning capability to absorb tacit knowledge.

An in‐depth case study was adopted. Further quantitative research may be needed to test our research outcome here.

The case study may provide valuable reference for the companies aiming to catch up via international acquisition in the developing countries.

First, this paper is to enrich literature on acquisition research from a technological perspective. Second, fast learning capability, especially the capability to absorb tacit knowledge, is the key to a successful acquisition when a lagging‐behind company in the developing country wants to catch up a leading one.

Uses a rich academic and professional literature to demonstrate that the rise and plateau of the US quality movement was the outcome of a complex senior management decision process that extended well beyond the problem of closing a quality gap between US and Japanese competitors. Firms in many industries adopted quality programs to solve simultaneously several problems more serious than quality. The managers of these same firms later revised their strategic agendas by replacing quality with new programs that addressed emerging problems that demanded their attention and resources. The conclusions of this research will help senior managers in many countries to decide whether to commit resources to support new managerial movements, and if so, to determine when to commit these resources.

Micromax is an Indian consumer electronics company which began by selling mobile phones. In early 2014, Micromax ranked third in the mobile handsets category in India, behind Nokia and Samsung. The case is set in 2014, a watershed year for Micromax. It has to make decisions related to the future direction of the company. There are various options available, such as expanding into other consumer electronics and consumer durables categories, expanding outside India, etc. Micromax had recently introduced premium smartphones, and there had been a gradual shift in its target segment from rural to more upmarket consumers. Micromax aspired to be considered among the best brands in the world; however, the company was unsure of how to move forward. Its leadership had to decide on the right positioning for Micromax.

The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically how a distributor's trust in a supplier and its use of control mechanisms affect the values it gains from the relationship.

Factor analysis and a structural equation model were used to test the framework in a sample of 251 distributors in the household appliances industry in China.

The findings show that a distributor's honesty trust in a supplier enhances the direct value gained through the use of both contract and relational norms, but hinders and promotes the indirect value gained through the use of contract and relational norms respectively. A distributor's benevolence trust promotes the direct and indirect value gained through the use of relational norms, but impedes the direct value and enhances the indirect value gained through the use of contracts.

A distributor's trust in a supplier may involve competence trust besides honesty trust and benevolence trust. Hence, the framework can be further studied in the situations where the distributor's trust in the supplier's competence is considered. Moreover, the sample of the empirical study only comes from the household appliances industry, and research in future may be extended to include multiple industries.

The paper may help distributors choose and use the proper control mechanism as well as foster a suitable kind of trust in suppliers to realize the objectives of maximizing the relationship value.

The results permit an in‐depth look into the effects of trust and control mechanisms on the relational values in a channel relationship context.

The foundations of quality management have been laid throughout the history of civilization. Since the dawn of industrialization, as a consequence of an increasing division of labor, the approach has evolved dramatically in terms of analytical tools and organizational practices. This evolution is outlined in this chapter. Starting from an overview of the different possible meanings of quality, the phases characterizing modern quality management (e.g., quality control, quality assurance, etc.) are described. Geopolitical and macroeconomic considerations are factored in to account for an uneven development across countries (e.g., Japan vs US). A general trajectory is traced as the scope of quality has constantly broadened to encompass not only the product, but also interorganizational processes and the impact on the environment and the society of the company activities. Against this backdrop, the current phase is seen as a polarization between a “classic” engineering approach and a more holistic view, questioning the same boundaries of the discipline.

In order to operate effectively in an environment of borderless markets, standard products and globalization marketing global multinational corporations have to function under a corporate philosophy which can sustain such concepts. In support of globalization theory, suggests that a holistic corporate philosophy approach is capable of maintaining congruence within the global multinational organization. Derives the basis of this approach from two major theoretical assertions: American and Japanese corporations are based on historically different conceptual foundations of business – American companies tend to be analytical, while Japanese companies are holistic. Views a holistic philosophy as a more effective corporate philosophy for the global multinational corporation.